German tremors send Sensex into a tailspin

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With Wednesday’s blood bath on Dalal Street that saw the Sensex swoon 467 points on the German blitzkreig, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark index has fallen 1,639 points from its high of 18,047 on April 7, a drop of 10 per cent.

Apart from a few triple digit falls the markets seem to be going through a “correction by a thousand cuts”. There was a similar pattern in January, says Mr Pradip Hotchandani of Anagram Securities, when the Sensex fell from 17,800 on January 6 to 15,651 on February 8. “We are now seeing a sharp correction to the rally from the February low to the April high of 18,047.”
Interestingly, he does not see too much of a further correction as the relative strength index (RSI) is high and from here onwards the market could go up. But global factors could pull it down.
The Eurozone crisis has impacted the emerging markets as the EM funds have seen a huge withdrawal in a month.
“We needed a correction as people needed to book profits. But going forward we will need a trigger to do better,” says Mr Sanjeev Patni of Prabhudas Lilladher.
He sees a further downside of five per cent. The markets at these levels are fairly valued at 16 times FY2011.
Mr Ambareesh Baliga of Karvy Stock Broking feels the correction will last a while longer as globally there is a flight to the safety of the dollar and US treasury.
The markets corrected as the FIIs have been net sellers. “But we see this as a buying opportunity. We were sitting on cash earlier as we were not confident at higher levels.
But we have started buying mostly in the capital goods, infrastructure and select pharma stocks.”
The Sensex closed down 467.27 points at 16,408.49 while the Nifty was down 146.53 points at 4919.65. The metals index saw the biggest fall at 4.19 per cent led by Sterlite down 7.33 per cent. The rupee hit an 11-week low at 46.31 to the dollar.